I am a long time Mac user (back to Mac Plus) and my main machine is a 27" i7 iMac with 32 GB. I had bought into Apple’s stance against Touch on computer’s and only using it on tablets on phones…
Well I need a laptop for a trip and skated one with decent specs. Since it would not get have a lot use (i don’t travel much), I could not justify the cost of a Mac Pro, so i went to Best Buy and bought the late 2017 HP Spectre X360 15.6" - Core i7 8550U - 16 GB RAM - 512 GB SSD 2 in 1.
I have not used it in tablet mode, but on the plane i found the touch screen really useful supplement to just trying to use the trackpad (I hate trackpads!) …
While I still think touch on my 27" iMac would be pointless, after that week long trip, I now think it should be standard on laptops … essentially any mobile device that one uses in close quarters… and think apple should reconsider their stance about not incorporating touch into OS X… BUT NOT by further iOSifying OS X!
I still like OS X better than Windows 10 and there are things I don’t like some things about Windows 10, but it has convinced me that touch does have a place in full fledged computers that are laptops, not just tablets.
In any case, while i don’t have anything specific in mind, I wonder how much touch specific ( Windows ink) features can be incorporated into Xojo windows apps.
You, I, several others in this forum and a bunch of my photography based customers agree.
I hope that I am wrong, but I don’t think we’ll ever see a touch screen macOS in it’s current form. It’s almost impossible to accurately speculate where the future of the Mac is, so take my observations as simply my observations. I honestly don’t see the Mac lasting as it currently is. iOS on the iPad is getting closer to the Mac and the Mac is getting closer to iOS on the iPad, to the point where i think these will converge. I see ‘Project Marzipan’ helping with this as supposedly it will make it easy to adapt iOS apps for the Mac, which I see as a very potential threat to ‘proper’ Mac applications, but once that transition has happened, any app that runs on the Mac will also run on the iPad. We’re talking years away.
Which is what hardware is supposed to do; inspire us software developers to use it in creative ways, as well as push sales of new physical devices.
In Xojo, I see that there is a “System.PenPressure”, but it’s for the Mac only (you know the desktop OS that doesn’t have touch screens). Maybe a Feedback request to get this on Windows also. Apart from that I don’t know what other services ‘Ink’ provides.
Karen, congratulations for your new machine, and your example of the plane, especially on domestic routes with the minuscule leg room is a brilliant example where even the trackpad is much less adequate than touch screen.
Windows implementation of touch is real nifty. Regular applications that have never been intended for touch get touchified, and usually work flawlessly. Amazingly enough, it is even fairly easy to click small buttons.
With the Android SDK, it also runs very nicely Android apps.
The current implementation of Windows 10 is a good example of what Project Marzipan could be in the future. The desktop is just what Windows used to be from 95 up to 7, and users find their way just as naturally as ever. But in tablet mode, it behaves very nicely with the mobile style interface.
I cannot believe Apple has not in one corner of it’s lab such machines, for the sake of experimenting. I don’t care what Federighi says to justify his prejudice against touch screen, but it would make no sense to use iOS apps without touch screen. All those using the iOS simulator can attest of it’s cumbersome nature.